


Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening, part 6

by raedbard



Series: Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening [6]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-07
Updated: 2006-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:14:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is bad comedy, possession and a new perspective on old friends, fury and submission, and promises given.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening, part 6

**Author's Note:**

> Right, this is where it gets complicated. This chapter both fills in the gaps and follows on from the previous chapter. So sections 1 through 5 fit in the middle of the previous chapter in terms of timeline - from Sam's return to work up to 'The Drop In' (Sam's version of 'Noel') and the conversation with Stanley Keyworth. The last section follows 'Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail'.

1.

On the first day, if not in its first hours, Toby follows Sam around the West Wing, three steps behind. They come in separately: Toby leaves first, after he calls a cab for Sam and demands that he be careful on his way to and from the car. They don't say anything else, they don't kiss, and when Sam gets to the office he finds Toby's two televisions on and blaring at an empty chair. He goes to his own office and wishes he could pull a blind down over the window that looks into his boss'. But, because he refuses to do this on the very first day, he sits carefully in his chair and tries to ignore the pain in his abdomen, and pulls the first stack of paper towards him and begins to read.

It's Josh who comes first, and of course it would be. He appears at the door half an hour into Sam's reading, looking like a little boy of thirty-five, one arm behind his back, his steps bouncing restlessly from foot to foot. He stands in the doorway, a slight smile at the corners of his mouth. Sam hardly dares look up at Josh because he knows what is written over his own face, though Josh could never read the words, even when they were his.

"Hey."

"Hi," Sam says, taking a full breath in and lifting his eyes to Josh's. They are dark, liquid, and Sam remembers things he had thought forgotten in them.

"How you doing anyway? I'm sorry I haven't been by ... "

Sam smiles, "I'm okay. My back hurts, but - " Sam reaches into his bag and pulls out a small white bottle, and rattles it. "I've got these."

"Nice."

"Codeine."

"Very nice."

"It's the sugar coating."

"Yeah, well, don't pop any near the Press pool - that's all I'm asking."

"I'll just say they're yours."

"Yeah, that would probably work."

They laugh, and it's suddenly easy, though Sam thinks the stand ups on the comedy circuit probably shouldn't feel too threatened. Josh comes in from the doorway and reveals what he was trying to hide behind his back - a steel grey crutch, with a red bow tied around the top.

"Very good, Josh. You think of that one all by yourself?"

"Donna was busy," he says, with a little shrug. "I'll leave it here, okay?"

"Sure," Sam says, grinning.

Josh nods, blinks - wetting his eyes again so that they seem to shimmer in the semi-darkness of Sam's office at six in the morning. He grabs hold of the door jamb and swings himself out of the room. "Staff in ten?"

"Yeah, I haven't actually forgotten that."

"'Kay."

Sam watches him go and isn't at all surprised when he comes back and makes it over to the desk in three steps, leans over and hugs him, hard, long. Josh smells of the clean air and Sam turns his face into the warmth of his neck.

"I was worried," Josh whispers.

"I know," Sam whispers back.

His hand takes hold of Sam's shoulder, then slips up to his face. He strokes Sam's cheek with his index finger, without once looking straight into his eyes. He stares at Sam's mouth for a moment, then lets go as suddenly as he began.

"You're okay?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then. Staff in ten," he says, again, tilting his head in the direction of Leo's office.

"I can remember the way. Thanks," Sam says, smiling.

The ten minutes pass slowly, feeling more like hours to Sam. He tries hard not to think about Toby, who he seems to know will be standing in the corner near the window, with the shallow early light on his face and the glow of Leo's lamps illuminating his hands, which will be knotted together in a vain attempt to keep them still. He will not look up at Sam.

Sam is the last one to get there, a little late, and the fuss his entrance creates costs them another ten minutes. CJ is the first to embrace him as he knew she would be and he relaxes when she touches him, a cool hand holding his for a second. She kisses him on the cheek. Josh hugs him again quickly and slaps a hand hard on his back. Leo touches his hand, which is small and warm through Sam's white shirtsleeve, to Sam's arm and grins widely.

"You okay, man?" he asks, and Sam realises how much he has missed this rich, textured voice.

"Yeah, sure," he says, feeling lame.

"Good. Okay, well, we need to do some work."

He is not right about everything. When he looks up from Leo's face, trying to keep the smile he's working so hard on, he sees Toby staring at him from the corner, his eyes black. His face is blank, unreadable, but he touches his fingers to his forehead, hands fluttering, and drops his eyes from Sam's.

They walk out in silence twenty minutes later and he goes out first, without looking back. He has appointments with the President, some person called Ainsley Hayes (and what kind of a name is that?) and three months' worth of paper to read through. He doesn't look back or up but down at his notes, new and white in his hand. He has almost reached the Communications Bullpen when he feels a brief touch slip across his back: Toby.

"You okay?" he says.

"Sure, why wouldn't I be?"

Toby looks at him, and his eyes are still black. "Okay."

They walk back to the Bullpen slowly and in silence, both of them pretending to read notes they have already summarised for themselves, but when they reach the first of their two doors, which is Toby's, his hand comes to Sam's elbow and steers him into the office, where the TVs are still booming. Toby pushes him in, gently with the side of his hand against Sam's arm, then shuts the door.

"Are you okay?"

"Toby, I'm fine."

"Right," he says, walking past Sam where he stands in the middle of the office, and turning the volume of the lower TV up a few notches. Sam flinches from the noise; his head has started to ache.

"I want you to work in here today."

"Toby, I can work in my own office - in fact, I'd _rather_ work in there."

"Yeah, well, I want you in here."

"Aren't people going to think that's a little odd?"

"No," he says, his voice deep underneath the higher whistle of the news anchor on CNN. "You're my deputy, you've been off work for three months and we've got things to make up for."

"Toby ... "

"You're in here, Sam."

"And where are you?"

He takes in a deep breath, "I've got one meeting on the Hill, and one across the hall. For the rest - " Toby waves his right hand around the room.

Sam nods, "Okay."

Toby nods back, and walks back across the room. He finds Sam's hand at his side and squeezes it and as he passes on his way to the door, Toby's arm brushes against Sam's, warm through his thin white shirt.

He gets his stuff from next door, not quite knowing what to take and what to leave behind and wondering if Toby had, in his absence, annexed his office as some kind of storeroom for the Communications department. He decides just the laptop, the three uppermost briefing books and some scribbling paper; Toby's got the rest after all. He passes Ginger on his way out and is faintly surprised by the look of gladness on her face, bright in her eyes. She grasps his arm where Toby's sleeve brushed it and he smiles at her, then pulls her into a one-armed hug and tries not to drop his laptop.

"I'm glad you're back," she says, and he can't help noticing how her eyes flick across to Toby, pacing in the office.

Sam nods, "Thanks, Ginger. Listen, er, has he been okay?"

"Not really," she says. "You remember the time with the Minority Leader and the rape sentencing guidelines, when he threw the dictionary through the window?"

Sam winces a little, "Yes."

"Kinda like that."

"I'm sorry," he says, with feeling.

Ginger smiles, a little, and nods. "I'm glad you're back."

"_Yeah_."

The day turns rainy about an hour after staff, whilst Toby is at the Hill. Sam watches the grey clouds beat at the window and tries to sink into the broken text which a lone thirty minute burst of energy produced on his laptop. He's not sure how valuable the words are right now, whether he shouldn't just delete the whole lot before Toby comes back and orders him to do so anyway, but he can't quite bring himself to press the key; erasing the only scrap of work he's managed for three months is too much this morning. He saves and closes the document, filing it away in a folder he keeps for fragments and phrases that have no immediate use, and shuts his laptop. Using the surface of the computer as a table, sitting on Toby's couch with his legs up on the cushions, Sam opens one of his boss's notebooks - cream paper and narrow-lined - and begins to write. The words flow from his hand, from the smooth ball of his fountain pen; cadences ring in someone else's voice and the rich, dark smell of black ink fills the air around his head. And he doesn't look up until Ginger touches his shoulder, a cup of fresh coffee in her other hand.

"I thought you, er, might need this," she says, holding it out. "Bonnie says you were looking sorta intense."

"What time is it?"

Ginger glances through the window at the clocks in the Bullpen, "Ten after twelve."

"Huh. That's ... unexpected," Sam says, looking down at the notebook. He has filled maybe eight or ten of the pages in his neat, measured script.

"What were you writing?"

"Hmm?"

"What're you working on?"

"Ah, I've really got no idea."

"Uh, okay ... " she says, putting the cup down on Toby's coffee table. "Anything we can help with?"

"No, I don't think so," Sam says, distant, staring down at the page. He looks up, suddenly, "Thanks, Ginger - for the coffee."

"Sure, no problem."

"Ginger?" he calls, as she is walking from the office.

"Yeah?"

"Is Toby back yet?"

"He will be soon, Sam," she says, smiling at him before she closes the door.

Toby is as good as Ginger's word, and comes through the office door about five minutes after she closes it, whilst Sam is still reading through the lines he put down in the notebook. The rain has soaked Toby through, darkening the shoulders of his overcoat and standing in his curls and his beard, giving them glistening weight. It brightens his lower lip, red against the black of his hair and the cold white of his skin. Sam stares at him.

"You're wet," he says.

"Yes."

"I didn't think it was raining that hard."

"Yeah, well, don't go out in it."

"I wasn't planning to," Sam says, closing the notebook on top of the laptop and laying his hands over them both.

"Have you done anything useful?"

Sam smiles down at his hands, then looks up, "No, not really."

"Right," Toby says, with a sigh. "Well, break's over, Sam. As of now."

Sam looks up at him, still smiling. "You get a promotion while I was away?"

"Sam."

"There's a difference between picking up someone's cadences and actually stealing their catchphrases, you know, Toby."

"You need to do some work now."

"Yes, sir."

Toby stares at him; Sam smiles, bright.

"Get your shoes off my couch, Sam," he says, after a moment.

"Toby!"

"Move!"

Toby takes Sam's ankles in his hands and pulls his legs aside, then sits in the gap he has made. Their thighs touch and Sam moves towards his warmth, remembers their bed, the night before.

"You're still wet through," Sam says, leans across and raises his hand to Toby's beard and strokes some of the water away, into his palm. Toby's head follows the movement of Sam's hand and his eyes begin to close. Sam wants to kiss him like he did the night before and taste himself in Toby's mouth. He moves towards him but Toby swallows, shakes his head and moves away.

"No," he says.

"Sorry."

"I, ah, don't think Ginger really needs that information right now, Sam."

"No."

"Or ever, really."

Sam looks up at him, feels his expectations sink into the floor. "Right," he says.

Toby swallows again, clears his throat and moves so that there is space between them. When Sam looks up at him, he sees a brief flush of pink across his cheekbones, and supposes it will have to be enough.

"What were you writing?" Toby asks, gesturing at the notebook Sam still has closed and covered by his hands, on top of the laptop.

"You can't read it," he says, quietly.

"Not work-related?"

"In a manner of speaking. But no, not really."

"In one of my notebooks though."

"Yes."

"Don't tell Ginger then. She's started complaining about the availability of stationery."

Sam gives him the smile he wants to see, takes a deep breath and says, "What's next?"

2.

Josh doesn't know why the hell he agreed to have the Thanksgiving football, beer and junk food blow out at his place. Last year they had it at Sam's since he is a much superior kind of host, the kind that cleans up before the guests arrive and again after they've gone. Josh is not such a host, and is hoping that he can coerce CJ (or Sam himself) into doing the washing up before they go home without getting a slap around the head for his trouble. Sam had been reluctant to let them invade his apartment this year, Josh guesses perhaps because he's been letting himself and the apartment go a little in the aftermath of the shooting. Though, if he knows Sam at all, his place probably looks better now than his own did before he stuffed the overflow mess into cupboards and threw out half of the contents of his fridge. He grins, and grabs a huge bag of chips.

"Joshua, are you going to eat _anything_ with any kind of nutritional value whatsoever?" CJ is behind him, sipping a beer and raising her eyebrow at him looking like every big sister who ever lived.

"What? Chips have nutritional value, CJ. And these are actually reduced fat, so I'd appreciate you getting off my back."

Toby pokes his head around the kitchen door, "You know, if you two are going to do this all night I might go back and beg the President for that seasonal lecture."

"Oh, c'mon, Toby!"

"Yeah, this is what I need."

"Toby, just sit," Sam says, coming in from the other room and nudging him in the back with a bottle of beer. They go through together and Toby sits, staring up at Sam with dark eyes then turning his gaze to the television when Sam flops down beside him. Josh notices the touch of their shoulders, and looks away.

"You know, CJ," he says, turning back to her, "Our generously given invitation can be withdrawn, you know."

"Josh!"

"I'm just saying."

"Why would you say that, Josh?"

"Because it's fun. Obviously."

"That's nice, Josh. Real nice."

"Will you two _shut up_!" Toby calls as they come through the door.

"Toby," Sam says, quiet and unguarded.

"'Generously given invitation'?" Toby says, turning to Sam with one eyebrow raised.

"It's Josh."

"Even so."

"Er, excuse me?" Josh says, taking his seat across from them.

"Ignore him," Sam says, grinning at him. "He knows the Giants are going down."

"Well, of course they are," Josh says, grinning back.

"Listen - " Toby begins, his hands open for the beginning of a rant.

"Toby, shut up," CJ says, from behind him. "It's bad enough that I have to sit through this stuff without an epidemic of testosterone poisoning breaking out."

"I think you mixing your metaphors a little bit there, CJ," Toby says, twisting round to look at her, a smirk starting at the corner of his mouth.

"What are you, the English language police?" she asks.

"It would be immensely satisfying to me if someone, somewhere, could stretch to having some _standards_!"

She bends over the couch, one hand on his shoulder, and kisses his cheek. "You're so much better than we poor mortals, Toby."

It is easy for Josh to forget, through all this. The football is played out and the Giants do indeed go down; he and Toby argue about the relative merits of football and baseball and how thoroughly (or not) the Yankees are going to kick ass next season; CJ rolls her eyes and allows Sam to talk to her about yachting. It is how they always are and, but for CJ and her demands that they not leave every single empty bottle and can on the floor around the couches, it seems exactly as they were last year, and every other time.

But for all the familiarity, something is different. At first he thinks it's Sam, who still winces sometimes if he raises his arm too high above his head or if one of them accidentally jabs him in the side without thinking, and Josh worries that there is something inside him that they haven't seen or offered help for, something still to come. Nothing has come, yet, and Sam seems just as he always was. There is nothing to indicate imminent trouble, or even its slow build, and that is what niggles at Josh, worrying him.

When Sam first came back, Josh had taken Toby and CJ aside and asked them to make sure that a proportion of the knucklehead stuff and the kind of stuff that keeps them all in the office past eleven at night on a diet of coffee and donuts, be kept off Sam's desk for a while. There was no point, he said, in killing him with this stuff for the first few weeks, whilst he got back on track. Leo had asked him, he said. Leo hadn't, not explicitly, but someone shot his best friend three months ago and he had needed some control over that. The lie, he found, had been easier. CJ had nodded and agreed; Toby had stayed very quiet. When CJ left, called away to brief, Josh had asked Toby, straight: are you okay with this? Toby had only stared at him and said: are you sure he will be? And Josh had not known what to say to his expressionless face, to the wall of ownership which arises between them when Sam is mentioned. Toby had said nothing else, just walked out and back to his own office. Ten minutes after, Josh could hear the hard thump of his rubber ball against their window from his own desk.

They never told Sam, and they never had the other meeting, where he gives the okay to resume normal service and let Sam do his job again. Amongst all the other things, where there is no certainty, they forget, and Josh, who is not as forgetful as he seems, allows it. There's not much slack and it hides itself among the paper, like so many things do. Sam seems oblivious. His healing continues, and there comes a day that Josh's first thought on seeing him in the morning is not _my best friend who was shot_. And but for the wincing and his new habit of standing behind the door in his office with his back straight to the wall, he seems just fine. It's easy to forget. He and Sam only spoke of that night once, briefly, when Sam shook his head and promised that he was okay, that they should just try to put it behind them, and that Toby was doing great at keeping an eye on him. Josh guesses he was right.

Thanksgiving night changes, getting colder with a glimmer of snow through the kitchen windows. No-one shows any indications of being on their way home. Toby passes Sam his discarded sweater when he starts shivering and Josh remembers those first days again and starts to see how he is wrong; that it's not Sam, but the man sitting next to him; it's Toby who has changed.

The two of them sit together opposite Josh and CJ and they are silent for the most part, communication between them concentrated to a traffic of glances and the exchange of their names, with little need for extraneous words. Toby, in between arguments and yells at the TV and complaints about the beer, keeps his eyes on Sam and his hands close to the other man's body. There is a sense of possession in him which is not only to do with keeping an eye on Sam and being sure that he is well. Josh remembers feeling the same way, a long time ago, when Sam was more than his best friend. He hears Toby's words at the hospital over again and wonders if love can look the same in other men as he remembers it in himself.

Sam is falling asleep over the late night poker game on the TV, his head falling back a little, resting on Toby's shoulder. Toby is debating the finer points of sentence structure with CJ and as Sam falls back on him he shifts his body around Sam's and let his arm come up along the other man's shoulder. It looks almost like a reflex to Josh, and he stays quiet. As CJ leaves the argument to get another beer, Josh watches Toby brush the hair out of Sam's eyes, seemingly oblivious to the third person in the room. Toby's touch is tender and light, and Josh has to look away; he feels like an intruder.

The next time, when Josh feels he knows for certain, is a month or so later; Toby's birthday. It has been their tradition, these last three years, to do whatever they can to make the holiday season even more trying for Toby than it already is. That his birthday always seems to fall on the very same day that they tend to have their party has in past years been a carefully-orchestrated bonus and a well-known secret. Toby, of course, hates the whole thing and sulks in the corner; Sam smiles and says charming things to pretty girls; Josh himself makes all his best jokes and grins through the boredom and the anxiety and tries to look manly on a bottle and a half of beer. Only CJ ever looks completely comfortable, and gives new meaning to the word 'mingle'.

The President drops by, briefly, and takes great pleasure in embarrassing Toby and taking advantage of Toby's constitutional obligation to graciousness. He claps his hand against Toby's back and gives a speech about speeches and those who are masters of the art of writing them. Toby blushes in pink stripes across his cheeks. When Josh, grinning himself, looks across at Sam, standing close by his boss, he sees his best friend beaming, radiant, and staring at Toby with an expression he remembers; one that used to belong to him.

He keeps watching them, drawn to the light in Sam's eyes. When the President is done, Sam pulls Toby close, fingers in his lapels, then hugs him hard with arms tight round and his head low on Toby's shoulder. Toby's hands, resting on Sam's back, do not move or pat to telegraph the end of the contact; they stay still and close and Josh watches that same mixture of tenderness and possession play out on Toby's face, wondering how long he's been this blind.

He says nothing, tries to be glad and not shocked, not incredulous, and he knows he cannot say anything for fear of these incorrect reactions creeping into his tone. And Sam would know, he always did.

3.

"He didn't want to see you?"

"No."

"It's like that sometimes, Toby. With you more than any of us."

"I annoy him."

"Yes, you do."

"It was my fault. Just an enormous blunder."

"We fixed it, it's okay now."

"Yeah."

"He'll have forgotten tomorrow."

"No, he won't."

"Okay, no, he won't. But it's a clean slate now, Toby. It doesn't matter."

"I just ... sometimes I wonder how long it'll take."

"Before you step over the line?"

"Yes."

"I think you've been there already. And you're still Communications Director. Best in the business."

"Sam."

"It's true, Toby."

"Only if he thinks so."

"He does. Didn't you hear that speech at your birthday? Weren't you listening?"

"That was ... well, it was one of the good days. We have good and bad days. I do try not to count them."

"Toby ... come on, it'll all be over tomorrow. It's over now."

"This round is, yes. I can't ever stop, Sam. You know?"

"Yes."

"I pushed CJ out. I misjudged Ann - "

"Ann Stark was using you, Toby. I'm honestly quite surprised you didn't notice, but you didn't and she fooled you. You made a mistake. But we fixed it."

"Where were you?"

"What?"

"What were you doing? I can't remember."

"I was messing up with Karen Cahill."

"Kyrgyzstan?"

"Or Kazakhstan. I'm still not really sure."

"It was Kyrgyzstan, Sam."

"Yeah."

Sam covers Toby's hand with his own, then leans across to kiss his cheek. "I'm going to bed now. Come in when you're ready."

Toby nods, "I won't be long." He watches Sam go through to the bedroom, shut the door. He turns off the main light and sits in the semi-darkness, one lamp lit on the desk. He thinks about the things he must not say and knows he will end up saying them anyway; he will let go the secrets they all keep from the President because that is his job. He thinks about the dreams that they have all put away, quietly, in the drawers of thought they all keep. They have no time for dreams, for magic, and _four more years_ is not enough as a mantra. Toby knows the fall is coming before he knows how the apple will taste but tonight he mistakes his fear for embarrassment and for anger. It is a long time before he sleeps.

*

Toby leaves for Kansas City at half past five on a Tuesday morning. He packed his stuff late the previous night and has had all of three hours of sleep, next to Sam, shifting through the hours. The boy - on nights like this he cannot help thinking of Sam as a boy, even as his brother some nights - the boy had curled up next to him, one hand caught against Toby's hip, his middle and index fingers slipping beneath his waistband. Toby knows that these things are the price for Sam's restraint, and for his own; these early morning intimacies. The night before Sam had kissed him up under his neck again, which is Sam's favourite place. And the hand that had started out on his belly had slipped to his thigh, and then between his legs. And he had twisted out of the embrace, turned Sam's shoulders away from him, but gently, and rested his hand over Sam's head, palm to his temple and whispered, "Go to sleep."

Toby remembers holding his brother that way when they were both just children, and one of them was crying for their father; when David would turn and twist in his arms and never settle until Toby pressed his chest up to his brother's back and arched his arm over David's head to hold a hand over his temple, almost a wrestle, almost an embrace. In bed with Sam he thinks of his brother often, as well as boys that he never knew when he was still young enough to merit some attention from them, when his beard was still black. He doesn't know why Sam stays, still less why he pushes up against Toby's body in the night, his erection a hot, hard knot against Toby's thigh. They have never gone any further than that one night almost five weeks before and Toby knows that it is becoming more of a struggle with each passing sleep, that the rare taste of Sam's mouth isn't enough.

That Tuesday morning, he slips from their bed and stands staring at the sleeping man, half-uncovered. Sleep writes a frown over Sam's face, dark in the thin morning light hardly showing through the window which they never seem to remember to cover. Toby bends over him and presses a kiss into his hair. He turns to go but he isn't surprised when he hears Sam's slurred whisper of his name.

Toby says, "Go back to sleep."

"Are you going now?"

"Yeah."

"So early?"

"Don't get the luxury of a 747 on this trip."

"Where is it again?"

"You know where."

"Yeah."

"Three days, Sam," he says, standing beside the bed with the mattress pressing into his thigh. Sam props himself up on one elbow and blinks as if to clear his sight. His other hand is resting in the hollow that Toby's body has left in the space beside him.

"It's a long time," he says, almost to himself.

"It's three days, Sam."

"Yeah."

"Listen," he says, lifting his eyes from the floor and coming closer, sitting on the side of the bed. Toby strokes two fingers through Sam's hair and the boy's head shifts under his touch, tilting, so that Toby finds his whole hand curled around Sam's smooth temple, holding his hair back from his forehead. "I'll be back soon ... work on the environment speech."

"The CARE thing? Okay," Sam says, bleary, his eyes still dark, dilated.

"I want it ready when I get back, okay? And call me if there's a problem ... with anything."

"I will."

"Okay," he says, taking his hand from Sam's head, gently, letting his thumb rub across the boy's eyebrow. "I'll see you then."

"Toby?"

"Yeah?"

Sam's voice echoes, unguarded, in the room as he reaches up towards Toby, whose arm is braced across the bed, his fist rooted beside Sam's hip, wrist touching the skin of Sam's side. Toby stares at the bedclothes as Sam sits up and straightens his tie around his neck, smoothes it down his chest, then slips his fingers over his collar, his fingers warm to Toby's neck.

"Sam."

Sam smiles down at the sheets, then puts both his hands up to Toby's lapels and strokes his hands over them. Then he looks up, "Sorry."

Toby looks at him, shakes his head slightly, "Don't."

"I'll miss you."

"Sam ... "

"Yeah, I know."

Toby sighs then, eyes closed, moves to Sam and hooks one arm over his shoulder and slips the other around his waist and holds him, close. Sam lets out a long breath against his body and to Toby he seems heavy in this embrace, his chest bare and cold in the morning air. His arms come around Toby's waist and pull him as close as their position will allow, bending his face into the curve of Toby's shoulder, for a moment, his face lost in the silent darkness there. Toby turns his head and kisses Sam's temple, Sam's short hair in his mouth. He whispers, "Three days."

When he breaks away, Sam is smiling. He sinks back into the bed, running his fingers over the back of Toby's hand as he moves away. He looks up, "Okay." Toby picks up his bag and his coat from the chair by the bed where it has lived for four months, turns and makes for the door, quick. When he looks back in the act of closing the door, he sees that Sam has turned in the bed, his back curled into an s-bend. Toby blinks, frowns, and closes the door.

On the plane later, cushioned and deafened by the noise of the cabin and in an attempt to block out the presence of the other passengers, Toby tries to sleep. He turns in towards the window and, crossing his left leg over his right, he wishes that the US government wasn't quite so cheap. Hoping the inevitable cramp doesn't wake him, Toby closes his eyes and tries not to think. When he sleeps he doesn't dream but when he wakes he expects the weight of another man's body in his arms and startles a little when he does not find it but comes up short against the smooth cabin window and the flat square of the drop-down table bouncing on his knee, having come loose. He mutters a curse under his breath and fixes the thing back in the upright and locked position, anticipating the orders of the stewardess by about five minutes. They are almost in Kansas.

He finds the hotel ordinary, soulless in the usual way. The girl at the check-in tries to engage him in conversation but the flight, the hour and the pain that the weight of his bags has made in his arm mean that he cannot even try to be civil and she walks away with a polite, "Enjoy your stay, sir," and her face white with anger. He flinches from her kept phrases and expectations and find his way up to the room without looking at any of the people he passes in the corridors. Once inside he makes for the bed and sprawls there. He is sweating, and he loosens his tie and breathes in the stale air. Toby falls asleep within ten minutes, his back flat on the bed and his hand covering his eyes.

The work doesn't take three days. It takes him about half an hour to realise that the the guy they've sent him here to schmooze really isn't into that kind of thing and is unimpressed by his peculiar style of donuts and thinly-veiled threats. It's probably a lost cause but he tries to keep his temper and the guy too, and it's possible that he hasn't screwed it up completely, which would make a change. When they shake hands there is a glimmer of a smile; job done. And when he gets back to the hotel there is a message waiting for him. Not Sam, who he'd been expecting, but Andrea, who he was not.

"How did you get this number?" he asks, as soon as she has picked up.

"Hi, Toby. How are you?"

"How did you get this number?"

"I called Ginger."

"Really?"

"Yes, Toby. I have that within my power."

"Hmmm."

"Just shut up and listen to me, alright?"

"In a good mood, Andrea?"

"Toby, I don't have the time, okay. Just shut up."

It is easier to do as she asks, and he is too tired to argue, for once. Toby wipes his hand over his forehead, wondering if this slip into apathy means he's getting sick. She is talking bi-partisanship and social security; he stops listening.

"So how was Ann?"

"Huh?"

"Toby, I realise it's a chore to listen to me but you could at least pretend a little more." There is laughter in her voice, then the blank cover of tone which means she's apprehensive and trying to hide it. He doesn't know why she pretends at all. "How was Ann?"

"She pretty well gutted me, Andrea."

"It was a stupid thing, Toby."

"Yes, I know."

"Did she look well?"

"Andy ... "

"I thought I was the only woman who could do that to you, Toby." He can hear the grin in her voice; this is a rhetorical question if ever he's heard one.

"You do have a way."

"She called me actually. She thinks you're losing your edge."

"I was informed that my sense of humour was lacking."

"Well, yes. She might have a point on that. But then you never really made me laugh." He imagines the curve of her mouth, the arch of her eyebrows. She is a minute from laughing at him; he is trying to remember the last time he saw her laugh. He is trying not to remember the blush that rose on her chest and the way she clutched at his arm, breathless with laughter, and kissed him. So long ago.

"No."

"How's Sam?"

His name sounds odd in her mouth and he shifts when he hears it, lifting the phone away from his mouth and taking a breath.

"Toby?"

"He's okay. He's fine."

"Don't baby him too much, okay?"

"He was shot, Andrea. He took three months to recover, he's only just come back to work and I - we don't want to completely break his spirit as well as his body in the first couple of weeks!"

"Okay, okay. But, listen: he's a smart guy, Toby, not an invalid. Don't stop him doing his job."

"Yeah."

"I hear Seth Gillette for the Blue Ribbon commission."

"Yeah?"

"Oh c'mon, Toby."

He shrugs, pointlessly, and sighs into the phone. "We need him. It's impossible to get him. Another impossible task that I will need to bring off some time in my sixteen hour working day, whilst writing the State of the Union and strategising the re-election. After I escape from Kansas."

"You're all set then."

"Obviously."

"Call me if you need to."

A pause from him. "Yeah, okay."

"Take care, Toby."

"Yeah."

She hangs up first and Toby thinks of all the tricks he's ever come across to avoid mind-control, but he smiles as he puts the phone back in the cradle and begins to pack his stuff back up.

*

Sam does not call. It's a discipline exercise, he tells himself, something he needs to learn. The days do not drag - there simply isn't the time - but there is an emptiness at the heart of the bustle. Sam misses the tones of his voice and the tiny sounds that the bounce of his heels make into the carpet and tiles of the corridors. The work is as much as ever, but not enough to satisfy him. He knows that Josh is channelling the stuff on his desk through his own, vetting it. He knows Toby is letting him. Sam keeps his anger still, quiet, smoothes it out with clean white shirts and old rhetoric. In the three days and nights that Toby is in Kansas, he is aware - just behind his daylight thoughts, behind protocol - of this mechanism developing a creak, a low whine. He drowns it out in silence, in books and sleep, and keeps trying to be himself. He believes that right will prevail.

Toby's body is part of the landscape of the nights, and for the first - which seems long and cold though it is no different from those in the week just passed - he cannot sleep. Sam's bed is not a particularly large one, though it has been big enough for two grown men these last weeks and months. It has grown a hollow where Toby lies, heavier than Sam and shifting into the mattress, impressing the shape of his back and belly on to the surface. Sam lies with his knee crooked into this depression, with his hand palm down in the space. He is used to curling around Toby's breadth, sometimes resting his cheek on Toby's shoulder and now he doesn't quite know where to put his limbs, or how to lie in his own bed. He has to arrange and re-arrange the pillows throughout the night. He can't sleep.

He passes time by running his fingers over the scar, still red around the edges and slightly inflamed from his few exertions. He has Toby's fingers in his thoughts as he strokes his skin, feels the muscle under the slightly thicker layer of fat that two months in bed will inevitably bring, as he parts his thighs and slips his hand down between his legs. He presses his back and hips down into the bed, imagining yielding to Toby's full weight, breathing in deeply and curving his stomach inward to make way for the shape of Toby's belly. He realises, after a time, that it hurts, a little, in a deep pale ache in his backbone, so that is where he imagines Toby's hands when he turns over, resting his cheek to the pillow. Sam rubs his erection hard into the mattress, ignoring the burn and breathing in air hot with dust and his own exhalations, face down into the sheets, ashamed. And when the moment comes he bites down on Toby's name, even though he can feel the kisses against the back of his neck and the arm that lifts his hips up off the bed and the roundness of a hard belly pressed against his back, and a hard length beneath that; inside him for a minute, maybe two. If he concentrates he can feel it, and is not quite alone.

He closes his eyes in the darkness, and lets the pain come back into his body. He lies still where he finished for a minute or two, then gets up, cleans the mess from his sheets and makes a mental note to wash and change them tomorrow. He goes into the bathroom, and throws some water on his face, washes his hands to get the smell of his own release off them. Then he climbs back into the empty bed and goes to sleep, finally, curled small into Toby's hollow.

The release (small, and distant the moment the high is over; he can hardly remember it now) tires him, and the next morning sees him hauling himself from the bed at five-thirty and standing in a lukewarm shower with his fingers rubbing into his eyes. He sits in Toby's office, both TVs on and turned up loud, reading, scribbling. It takes him until lunch and at least six cups of coffee to feel really awake. When Ginger knocks the seventh cup with her elbow as she brings him some more briefing notes that he might just as easily give back to her and ask that she deal with herself, he hears himself yell at her and curve his hand around hers, harshly, and bat her fingers away. She stares at him; the wrong man in the wrong chair, as though a pillar of her world has shattered. He suppose perhaps it has, but so has his own. He stands up, hands open and apologises, over and over. She nods, still frowning, and he knows what she is thinking, and that she will tell this to Josh, or someone. He mops up the coffee, and practises smiling.

Josh comes to him on the third day, to check in on some stuff, he says. Sam notes that he's careful not to mention Ginger or anyone else, or let a negative note slip into his carefully chosen words. Sam choses words for his living, and he has never considered Josh a master of the art. He smiles and lets Josh get to the real questions in his own time. He watches him: grey eyes and soft, nervous mouth. His steps bounce on the carpet, and if he could close his eyes Sam could imagine the resulting sound is Toby, thinking through his body. He is careful not to close his eyes. Josh tries to explain, words tumbling, then stuttering from him; telling him what Sam has already guessed. Sam doesn't ask him to stop. The CARE speech, now in seven drafts, sits in the middle of his desk, covered in red pen marks. It is the only genuine work he can remember doing for a month, and he's looking forward to hearing it. It'll be a blow-out. He reads the text through, pretending to listen to Josh.

When the question comes, the only question and the only thing he hears, Sam is smiling. He is remembering.

"Sam, are you ... I'm sorry - do you miss Toby?"

"What kind of question is that, Josh?" Sam asks, looking up at him.

"Nothing - I'm just ... I'm just saying, you two ... Well, you're spending a lot of time with him."

"I work with him. We work together."

"Yes."

"What's your concern, Josh?"

Josh comes closer, leans over the desk, elbows on the third draft of the CARE speech. Sam frowns at the creases he is making. "I'm not stupid, Sam. And maybe you can fool other people, but you're gonna have to try a little harder with me. Because I already know the signs."

"What are you saying?"

"You're ... there's some kind of _thing_ going on. Some kind of relationship between you."

"No, Josh."

"Well, what is it then? Because there's something going on, and I'd like to know what it is."

"As my boss, or as my friend?"

"As your friend, for now."

"For now?"

"Yes, Sam! I can't - I can't sanction this!"

"You haven't heard anything yet."

"Well, tell me."

"It's nothing ... it's not like that. We share the apartment - "

"I'm sorry, whose apartment?"

"Mine. He started staying over after the shooting. He just hasn't gone home yet."

"There's only one bed in your place. You're telling me Toby's been sleeping on your couch for five months?"

"No. We share the bed."

"You share the bed?"

"Yeah."

"_You share the bed_?"

"Josh - "

"You gonna tell me it's none of my business now?"

"I was, actually."

"Between two people who work for me, it is my business."

"So no such thing as confidences, then?"

"Oh come on, Sam"

"Are you going to tell Toby too? Are you going to tell him what he can do and whose bed he can sleep in? Because I wanna be there when that happens."

"What is this, Sam?" Josh asks, after a moment of silence has come between them. He is quiet, an undercurrent of concern. His eyes have coloured dark grey. Sam stares at him, unbowed.

"I don't know."

"Because, I can't help thinking - "

"Don't compare this to you and me, Josh. It's not the same."

"Right."

"I don't know. He's ... my friend."

"You're not ... you know?"

"What? Fucking him? No, I'm not."

"That's not what I meant, Sam."

"No," Sam says, into his hands as he is done wiping them across his face. "It's not that."

"Okay, buddy."

"You gonna talk to him about this?"

"I'll take a pass on that. There are some horrors man just wasn't meant to face."

Sam smiles, brief, unsunny. "Could've been good."

"If good is a trip to the emergency room, possibly."

"Yeah."

"You okay?"

"Four months and people still haven't stopped asking me that. Yes, I'm fine, Josh."

"I worry about you."

"I'm fine, and no, you don't. You've got other things to worry about, and so have I."

"I guess."

"But don't worry about this. Toby'll go soon. I'm surprised he hasn't gone already."

"Yeah," Josh says, quiet again. Sam knows he is not convinced, that he now knows for certain that which Sam has been trying to hide for months. Suddenly Sam knows he can't give out his trust anymore. He has entered a world of secrecy, ill-equipped and already floundering. He can't take his words back into his mouth, or deny their implications. They will make their own song for Josh and are no longer his alone, and Toby's. If they were ever Toby's.

5.

"Get away from me."

Four words are enough to start the fall, four words after the few hundred that preceded them is enough to shatter trust unspoken. Sam's words glow with betrayal, he is almost in tears. Toby can only look at him, tall in fury, shoulders broad and his face full of light. Toby thinks: _angel_ before he can stop it and lets his stare follow Sam as he stands, arms wide.

Toby can't remember anything they said before the bottle smashed on the wall, missing his face by inches. The beer sprays droplets in his eyes and he tries to blink them away, aware that Sam is still in the room, coming at him, rushing at him, fists and arms, his elbow connecting with Toby's collarbone. Toby raises his hands, high to cover his head; submission. He feels Sam's hand cover his own, white fingers and sweat and wrath and his hands pulling. He hears Sam cry out as they fall against the pattern of broken glass on the bar floor, rolling over. Sam pulls his hand away hard, then flings it back out at Toby's face, connecting with his jaw. Toby turns his head, down and low, to the floor where Sam holds him. He feels the glass fragments cut into his cheek, beneath his beard. He stays silent, he waits.

It's over as quickly as it was begun. Sam pushes himself to his feet, throws a hand out at the arm of what had been Toby's chair, grips hard. It is his injured hand, but he can't feel the pain. He stands, shaking, staring at Toby's body in the wake. Toby, curled next to the leg of the chair with his arm up across his face, moves slowly, as though with a uncertain animal. He raises his hands first, still submission, pale hands open.

"Sam?"

He gets to his feet; winces a little, feels his knee crack, ignores it. The boy's stare is following him but his eyes are blank, catching on only to movement, not seeing. Sam is white, but for the high patches of red under his eyes, across his cheeks. The sweat is standing pale on his forehead and darkening the collar of his blue shirt. Toby thinks, for a moment, how odd it is for him not to be in white.

"Sam?"

"Toby ... I - "

"Don't talk, okay? Don't talk."

He forces his hands through the thick air that hangs around Sam, from his open mouth. His eyes close as Toby strokes both his hands along his chest, uselessly straightening Sam's tie and collar, then wiping the sweat from under his chin. Sam's head follows the movement, easy, fluid. Toby pulls him close, holding him so that he cannot fall, his hand in Sam's hair, ruffling it at the back.

He whispers: "It's alright, Sam. It's okay ... it's me."

*

He finds Josh first, with luck or not. He left Sam in his own office and drew the blinds, locked the door, hoped it was enough.

"We had a fight," he says, listening to the high shivers of breath still in his voice. He tries for steadiness; it won't come.

"What kind of fight are we talking about here, Toby?" Josh asks him, taking in the small series of cuts on Toby's neck and the beer stain on his jacket. He is on the edge of a smile, as though he expects that he is about to hear a funny story about Sam and the mad pigeon he set on Toby in the Bullpen. Toby feels his fist clenching.

"A fight. The drop-in, the environment thing. He - he threw a bottle at me."

"A bottle of what?"

"Josh - please. He needs help."

"What are we talking about?" Josh asks, the funny gone. His eyes, Toby notices in a moment of stupid clarity, are dark grey. In Josh it means worry, and fear. He had forgotten that Josh and Sam are best friends.

"I think it's ... more. I don't know - maybe even something to do with the shooting. He's out of it."

"Just tonight?"

"No."

"Toby?"

"Tonight, over the speech but he's been ... off, for a while."

Josh nods, and Toby knows he is saving the interrogation. "Okay. Where is he?"

"My office."

"I'm gonna talk to Leo, I think he knows a guy. Keep him in there til I come back."

The office is darkened, quiet. It's late and most people are on their way out. He slipped past Ginger the first time, but Toby hears her little knock on the door and the squeak as she tries the handle; no one to say goodnight too. She goes anyway and he is relieved. Sam is leaning on his shoulder, curled with his hands up under his chin. He has not said a word since Toby made him sit on the couch, still, an attempt at calm. He is shivering. Toby pulls him closer.

Josh whispers behind the door, perhaps fifteen minutes later: "Toby?"

Toby unlocks the door, find Josh alone and is beyond thankful for it.

"I've called the guy. He works with ATVA."

"Trauma Victims?"

"Yeah. He'll be here within the hour."

"What's his name?"

"Keyworth. Stanley Keyworth. Leo says he's good."

"He'd better be."

"What the hell is going on, Toby?"

It is easier to hide the words than say them, but Toby tries anyway. There's no way Josh doesn't suspect; they have not been careful enough, not nearly careful enough. He sits back down with Sam and lets the younger man sink against his side, adjusts to the weight and slips his arm back round. Josh watches, nods to himself. When Sam moans, heavy and lost, against him Toby lets the curve and yield of his body against Sam's take the place of words; turns full and holds Sam against his chest, stroking his hands through the black, wet hair at the back of Sam's neck.

6.

"So you talked to him?"

"I did."

"What he say?"

"Pretty much the same stuff - he's sorry, you know. I don't really think he is. But it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't matter? You slept on my couch for four nights and now suddenly it doesn't matter?"

Sam shakes his head. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it."

"Sam, that couldn't matter less right now."

"He lied," Sam says, shrugging, his mouth forming a line of resignation. "I didn't know he could do that, not to me. To my mom."

"Yeah, he lied. People lie, Sam."

"He's my father, Toby."

"Yeah."

"I didn't know he could lie like that ... about the small stuff, sure, maybe. But - " Sam breaks off, laughs. "For twenty-eight years. That's some guy right there, some commitment right there."

"You don't get to know everything, Sam."

"It's not about knowing everything. Just the stuff that matters. The stuff your life can turn on."

"So now you do know. Are you any happier?"

"Not really."

"So, you don't get to know everything. And maybe that's okay."

"You never talk about your father," Sam says, after a pause.

"No, I never do."

"Is it a policy?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"He went to jail."

"Why?" Sam asks, his eyes dark across from him in the bed, his head still down on the pillow.

"Because he's a criminal."

His mouth opens to ask why again, but Toby kisses him as an answer and pushes his mouth up against Sam's, hard. Their teeth clatter and Sam gasps into his mouth, in some pain, for a moment. Toby doesn't have any words for his own father, and it doesn't sound as though Sam's deserves any either but he cannot dismiss the illusion that his dad's voice over the phone wrought for Sam, those reassurances that are only lies to Toby. Sam yields; opens his arms and thighs and body to Toby, who cannot take him. Toby lightens his kisses, takes his weight from Sam. His eyes are too bright, his pupils shining slick and huge; too full of want.

"Toby ... please?"

"No."

"I don't know how you do this," Sam says, propping himself up on his elbow. "I don't know how you sleep here, every night - "

"Sam, that's enough. Okay? Go to sleep."

"I don't know how you do that either," he says, quiet. There is no anger in him now, briefly come across the set of his shoulders and gone again. He shifts his weight across the bed, their hips no longer touching.

"Sam ... "

"No, it's okay, Toby. It's fine."

Toby leans across him, elbow bent into the hollow of Sam's chest, and strokes his face. Sam swallows, then puts his hand over Toby's and removes it. Sam smiles at him.

"We're going to have to come to some kind of conclusion about this, Toby."

"N-not yet, okay?"

"Yeah."

"Sam, I - "

"It's alright. I mean, I don't know what you think this is. But I understand."

"I don't know what it is."

"I don't mind being used, so much, Toby. It's the not knowing that makes it hard."

"I'm not ... I'm not _using_ you, Sam. I don't know why I ... " He sighs, defeated. "Why I need to be here."

"Is it like with your brother? When you were little?"

"It used to be. It isn't now."

Sam nods. "Yeah."

"I'll go ... if you want me to."

"No, Toby."

"I shouldn't be here."

"Bed's half yours now, Toby. Don't wanna neglect it."

"I'm historically accomplished at that kind of thing."

Sam smiles, reaches out and begins to pass his fingers over and over Toby's bare shoulder. Toby moves across to him, nearer.

"There's so much of you that still loves her. You never speak about Andy either."

"Sam - "

"She's your wife, Toby. I understand. This is a different thing."

"She's my ex-wife."

"Six years, and ... these last two."

"Yeah."

"She have anything to say the other day?"

"She gave _me_ an idea. So when she tries to claim the credit I will need witnesses."

"You have any?"

"CJ."

"Well that's lucky then."

Toby smiles. "Yes."

Sam reaches out for Toby's left hand. The wedding ring slips gold under his fingers, cold, bare promises and those things which cannot be asked for. He thinks of it as honesty, as Toby's kind of honesty. Toby tugs at his hand, caught tight in both of Sam's, but Sam will not let it come away. He holds it close and twists the band between his right thumb and forefinger, his left curled around the square of Toby's wrist. Sam doesn't mean to say it but the words come anyway, his own unwrought promise, pale in the lamplight and uncertain, unsanctioned. Toby kisses him into silence and his mouth is slow like a hand on his back, like a whisper in his sleep.

All Toby whispers is, "I know, I know, Sam."


End file.
